Flexible scheduling is a prime benefit for homeschooling mother Rachel Henderson and her first grader and kindergartener. (Photo by Jay Paul)
When the COVID-19 pandemic descended in 2020, many parents were forced into the world of virtual schooling.
Rockville resident Julie M. found herself teaching her three kids at home. The search for best practices was intense, especially in teaching her younger two children, who were adopted from difficult circumstances in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and faced additional learning challenges. (Richmond magazine is withholding her last name at her request.)
“We are believers that each kid and each season has different needs,” she says. “We say, ‘One kid, one year at a time,’ and every year, we discuss homeschool, public school and private school, if we are able. We have done all three, and each child has input while we as parents have the final say on what is best for them.”
Teaching your kids at home isn’t for everyone, but it is for many parents who never considered it before the pandemic. For many who began homeschooling for safety, health or other reasons, additional benefits began to reveal themselves, resulting in homeschooling becoming the fastest-growing form of education in the United States.
In Virginia, parents who homeschool must notify their local school divisions by Aug. 15 each academic year. If a parent moves into the district or changes to home instruction after the start of the school year, they must notify the school division at once. This “notice of intent” allows Virginia to track homeschooling numbers, while some states do not require homeschooling parents to report.
The Washington Post in October examined nearly 7,000 school districts nationwide and reported that homeschooling numbers have increased and have remained steady since the pandemic. The Post reported an increase of 31% in homeschool enrollment in Virginia since the 2017-18 school year, a margin that pales in comparison with the numbers from other areas, including Washington, D.C. (108%), New York (103%), South Dakota (94%), Rhode Island (91%), California (78%) and Tennessee (77%).
Why have parents continued to homeschool their children beyond a worldwide pandemic that forced virtual schooling? The choice is based on several reasons, including flexibility, politics, safety, educational quality and religious preference.
Ample Options
Doing school on your own timeline is a primary appeal for many families, including Dr. Edward “Ted” Henderson and Rachel Henderson, and for their children, Penniella, a first grader, and Solomon, a kindergartener. That flexibility in scheduling allows the family to travel for extended periods each year to do international humanitarian work. “Homeschooling allows us to bring school wherever we go or take extended breaks from schooling if and when needed,” she says. “Public and private schools don’t allow for that amount of flexibility.”
Randy and Kelly Clary’s sixth grader daughter, Haley, just doesn’t learn best early in the morning, according to her parents. Homeschooling provides flexibility not only in their daily schedule, but it allows the Glen Allen family to take longer trips, which often correspond to their daughter’s studies. Kelly Clary says that this allows them to experience an event instead of just reading about it.
For many parents who worked full-time jobs during the pandemic, virtual schooling was an almost impossible challenge. “Homeschool can be as easy or as difficult as you make it,” Clary says. “There are co-ops [groups of families who work cooperatively to achieve specific goals] that meet one to three days a week. As kids get older, they do the work themselves, and you just help them whenever they need assistance.”
Socialization and Co-ops
Along with homeschool numbers, the popularity of homeschool co-ops has grown. In addition to socialization, co-ops may be used to teach certain subjects (since parents may not prefer to teach Spanish or physics), or they may focus on other areas of interest, such as the arts, diversity of culture or language, or other topics.
That’s important for Julie M. She chose an ethnically diverse co-op for her children and has seen interest in the concept grow over the years. “The co-ops that I have been involved in and the people who began homeschooling because of the pandemic, most of whom have continued, and the two co-ops we have been a part of (neither of which are religiously based) have both grown exponentially in the last few years,” she says.
Quality of Education
Homeschooling parent Rachel Henderson cites the need to preserve opportunities for daily unstructured play. “I strongly believe young children thrive and develop healthy problem-solving and coping skills and creativity when allowed plenty of unstructured playtime, especially outdoors,” she says.
Henderson, a former public schoolteacher, and her husband, a pediatrician, are also concerned about over-reliance on technology in working with children and limiting tech access for their children. “Our children were not exposed to screens until they were 3 years old. At 5 and 6, they still do not have access to screens outside of a biweekly family movie night and brief phonics review done with a parent on a tablet,” she says. “As a former teacher in Virginia’s public school system, I am aware of the unhealthy amount of time children spend on devices at school. As a homeschooling parent, I have selected a curriculum that is zero tech and all paper- and book-based learning.”
Julie M. doesn’t homeschool for academic benefits alone. “Kids learn best by being curious. I let them lead and run with things that make them curious,” she says. As the white mother of two Black children, she says she seeks out experiences where her children have racial mirrors, like learning about a subject or historical situation from a reenactor who looks like them or seeking educators from the African diaspora that make them proud of who they are.
Seeing her children enjoy learning is key for Julie M. “Watching our kids thrive in a low-stress environment, knowing that they are excited to learn … I don’t know if I ever came home from public school really lit up about what I was learning, and yet they are lit up all the time because they are designing their own education,” she says.
